For what it's worth, CR reversed course after a software update. Crazy.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars...raking-update/

heh, Our cars have now become like Windows. Just keep them regularly patched and all is good.

I had a friend just buy a P85D last week. He took me for my first ride in a Tesla.

That was the first time I’ve ever been in a car that made everything else I’ve ever been in feel like it’s 100 years old. It was crazy, everything is familiar but they designed all of it to be/look/feel like something unfamiliar too. If someone told you it came from 25-30 years in the future and you’d never heard of them before you’d believe it.

That was fast.
Makes me wonder how the issue wasn't detected and the patch applied prior to releasing the units and what else is being missed or passed on.

Goddamned mother****ing Deere has been that way for years.

Couple years ago I dropped 300 large on a lightly used sprayer that had to go back to the shop for 2 days before I sprayed the first acre to un**** a bunch of updates and shit. :cuss:

It's not just Deere. I NEVER update right after they release new software. About the second time that shit cost me hours and hours of down time I said **** that and left it up to other people to be their test subjects.

Same here.

Awesome. Tesla is stealing Microsoft's old motto:

Where quality is job 1.1

If your car is released with software bugs, what could possibly go wrong?

Looks like Elon's turning his creative attention toward the pickup truck. It's gotta be at least 4-5 years out, but this is an interesting feature to think about.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Pickup truck will have power outlets allowing use of heavy duty 240V, high power tools in field all day. No generator needed.</p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1011724688706318337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I don't think he can come up with enough batteries to run pipeline welders and shit. Those things make an electric meter sing.

EDIT: The suspension thing is absolutely necessary. I have no idea why they don't use air suspensions in pickups right ****ing now. (They should)

Any idea what kind of juice one of those things draws? I'd imagine it would be a lot, but I could buy that a 100 KWh battery would be able to power one for a short time at least.

Man, I always screw up the math with electricity.

We have this job on a trailer, which is what he'd want to be attaching to a truck.

https://www.millerwelds.com/-/media/...4/c/ed4-75.pdf

I think what this is saying is 24 V @ 350 A. And if my math (The conversion calculator LOL) is right, that's 7.8 KW. So say you're welding 45 minutes out of an hour, and you work 10 hours, that would be almost 60 KW, so depending on how long the drive is, that would take a good portion of the battery.

He is an absolute savant on the conceptual side.

Interesting - that's actually better than I would have guessed. The Model X is probably the closest thing we have to compare to, and it gets around 2.9 miles per KWh. The truck would certainly be heavier than that, so let's assume it gets 2.0 miles per KWh. That would mean a 100 KWh battery could drive around 80 miles (40 KWh) after the usage you described above.

Mind you, I'm making the assumption that a 100 KWh battery is the minimum of what it will come with (based on other specs Elon is tweeting). That probably means we're talking about a $100k+ vehicle. So it isn't exactly going to be the vehicle of choice for your average good ol' boy.

Anyone here work in outside sales? Drive a company car? ...I've been tossing around the idea of a Fleet Co that leases only Tesla Vehicles with the Self Driving feature. For professional organizations moving from car allowance to fleet cars is already an established bottom line mover, imagine how much more efficient electric cars would be. But the big win is in how much more efficient your salesforce would be. Sales people are constantly juggling whether they should be on the road, phone, or computer. With this technology they can be on all three at once!

Interesting. I'll be watching to see if Elon takes cues from guys who actually use trucks for work. The self adjusting suspension is a good start. Hell, put an air compressor and a tow winch in there too while you're at it.

I don't but work plenty with them. It's a huge issue. And it's not just sales. Contractors are always on their phone too, often checking in on their next appointment. The reason I think automation will take off isn't individual cars, it's businesses that will recognize how much productivity is wasted while driving cars. It will likely start with transportation off roads (rail, within a business facility) then be introduced to public roads. Just know that there are a lot of people trying to roadblock this from scaling, so know that the market will be very very slow to develop. And understandably so... The unfortunate byproduct is that when you introduce more driverless commercial fleet, you inevitably gut a ton of people too.

My numbers may be WAY off. That's just the welder we have. Guys that do it for a living may use far more than that rig would. But I'd bet pros could get 45 minutes out of an hour burning rod.

As far as cost, I don't know what a 1 ton diesel dually costs, but it's not that far from 100 I'd bet.

Most guys that work out of their trucks will want to use their own stuff. But getting enough amps for a welder plasma cutter and 2 stage compressor would be a pretty huge deal in my mind.

Once they get their manufacturing issues solved they really need to concentrate on getting the prices down to a level enough consumers can afford to make Tesla profitable. Until then Elon should probably quit calling people pedos for no reason.

1 in 4 Tesla Model 3 orders has been canceled, analyst says

Tesla is finally making enough cars -- it just can't sell enough of them.
Cancellations for Model 3 orders have picked up in recent weeks. Refunds now outpace deposits for Tesla's new mass-market electric car, according to Needham & Co. analyst Rajvindra Gill. Tesla is pushing back on his findings.

In an analyst note delivered to clients Thursday, Gill cited extended wait times for the car, the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit, and the fact that Tesla has not yet made the $35,000 base model of the car available for purchase yet.

About one in every four Model 3 orders is canceled -- double the rate from a year ago, Gill said. Customers have to put down a refundable $1,000 deposit to reserve a Model 3, then pay another $2,500 to choose their specific version. They pay the rest when the car is delivered.

The wait time for a Model 3 is about 4 months to a year, and base model customers could wait until 2020, Gill said.

A Tesla spokesperson denied that Model 3 cancellations exceed new orders. The spokesperson also said the wait times that Gill cites are outdated. Tesla's website currently lists wait times from 1 month to 9 months.

Gill called sales of the Model S and Model X "lackluster," especially with the growing amount of competition from luxury manufacturers. Tesla announced earlier this month that orders and deliveries of those models grew last quarter. The company is also maintaining its delivery target of 100,000 vehicles.

He doubts Tesla will reach its target of 100,000 Model 3 deliveries by the end of the year -- to accomplish that goal would require it would have to ship 27% more cars in the second half of the year than it did in the first half. Gill said that he's also "skeptical of demand" for the sedan.

In another warning, the analyst said Tesla's capital structure is also "unsustainable," as free cash flow continues to evaporate. Gill expects Tesla to burn through $6 billion by 2020. He wrote that the Tesla stock is "still overvalued" despite falling 16% from its June 2017 peak.

He downgraded Tesla (TSLA) stock to "underperform" -- essentially a sell rating.

Tesla has been struggling with the Model 3 for several months. Separately, investors aren't thrilled with founder Elon Musk's antics on Twitter.

Tesla's stock fell nearly 3% Thursday.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/19/tec...ade/index.html

I never understand people thinking these cancellations are a huge deal.

They had over 400,000 reservations, if 1 in 4 cancel they still sold 300,000 Model 3's in advance of 1 even being built.

We've never seen anything like that in the car industry before. I see these things every day now in Atlanta, and I'm guessing that will continue for years.

In 2017 BMW sold 305,000 cars total in the USA. That's every single 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, X3, X4, X5, X6, M, Z, i cars all included. Mercedes sold a hair under 338,000 total.

Tesla, a little start up in California that only makes electric cars, and the 2 biggest luxury brands on the planet. For comparison's sake.

Good post, thank you.

One is a start-up struggling to stay alive who can't exist without subsidies, has massive production shortfalls, does not currently offer a single product that is price pointed for 95% of the market and whose stock value just got downgraded to 'buy'.

The other is BMW.

But other than that.

Complete bullshit. Guy has zero credibility.

I can only assume he's counting those who chose to forgo their Model 3 reservation in favor of a Model S in his numbers.

(Just checked, guy looks like he's in his 20's, Tweets about reality TV and HGTV more than anything, and lives in NY , so I doubt he has an "insider").

Also, Tesla is THE most shorted stock on the market, so you can't really believe much of any of the negative headlines. 80% are blatantly false or misleading in their face. The rest seem to fail to understand what they're looking at in favor of "the way the alto industry has always done things". Shorters have lost BILLIONS to date. HUGE incentive to spew bullshit. Especially Chanos.

Still talking about a bankrupt company?

I wonder if Tesla will be around in 5 years. The technology is great of course, but it's not new anymore and the mega-manufacturers are catching up, while Tesla hasn't yet been able to deliver on promises of being more than a niche manufacturer or getting any affordable models to market.

It's not going to be long before all their first-mover advantages are gone and Toyota, Honda, BMW, Benz, etc are eating their lunch with their scale and... you know... ability to actually get things made.

They teased a mini-submarine the other weekend. Wonder when preorders for that will start? LMAO

Name one company "catching up".

Na, I frankly think you're completely off on all of that. I think part of the issue with the way people evaluate Tesla is that they say "Well, Toyota can crank out XXX number of cars without a problem. Why is it so hard for Tesla?" That completely ignores the fact that electric car technology is still in its infancy and that building them is still really, really hard compared to a gas car.

If nothing else, all of those other companies are probably 10+ years behind Tesla in battery production capabilities. Telsa itself (in partnership with Panasonic) is currently producing about as many Li-ion batteries as the entire rest of the world combined (including phones, laptops, etc.), and they're already planning for at least 2-3 more in the coming years. None of the companies you listed have anywhere near that level of capability, and it costs a **** ton of money to build them (even in big car company terms).

And even ignoring all that...some might recall that Tesla gave away all of its patents on battery technology years ago. Why? Because Elon doesn't give a shit about "winning." He just wants more electric cars on the road no matter who makes them.

People are down on Tesla. That tells me that it’s time to invest heavily, soon.

Just a gut instinct.

I've intentionally chosen not to invest in individual stocks, so I have very little vested interest. But I have a feeling that their earnings call on August 1st will surprise some people. This teardown suggests that they'll make a whopping 30% on the Model 3, which is WAY beyond initial expectations.

You can make a lot of money on speculative stocks that have a loyal following, even with poor profits.

It's knowing when to get out and "timing" the market that's the hard part.

I actually think if Tesla makes it the next say 5 years, maybe 10, most of those other car manufacturers won’t exist anymore.

The day of the internal combustion engine, and the car we have to drive, are ending very soon.

Which sounds crazy, but if you’d told anyone about an iPhone in 1990 nobody would have believed it was possible.

Eh, I could buy ICE cars being toast in the future (though I'd put it more like 15-20 years down the road rather than 5-10). I'd imagine most of those manufacturers will pivot to serve the e-car market, though, especially if the EU mandates electric cars by 2030 like they've talked about.

I guess to clarify on my above comment, I fully expect other manufacturers to release legit e-cars in the coming years. It's the "Telsa goes under because of it" narrative that I think is really hard to believe if you really pay attention to the nuts and bolts (or electrons and atoms more accurately) of all of this.

So you believe this hype about semis that go from 0-60 in 5 seconds and the like, and think they are going to bring something like that to market soon? And their hype about making a $200k production car that's faster than a formula one car?

If acceleration is where you get hung up, you clearly haven't been paying attention. It's relatively easy to make an electric car that can burn a gas car 0-60. The hard part if you're talking about racing is making one that can sustain 100+ mph speeds without overheating.

You know both of these things currently exist and are being tested/driven daily right?

Electric is near, and it's going to be here fast. And it's going to decimate oil company profits. If the US doesn't invest in it, China and Europe will (and have). Private passenger will take a while. But public transportation and commercial use will use a lot more electric and a lot more driverless (which needs to run on electric). The big game changer, though, is Uber/Lyft. They've tipped the scales. As the tech increases adoption, you'll see more charging stations and a competitor arms race to build a better mouse trap.

It should be easier. There are far fewer components and moving pieces to electric. Is it the batteries they struggle with?

Calm down there turbo. I think adoption will be slower than you are thinking. The thing about commercial adaptation is it generates revenue so there can't be downtime. Like at all. You can be as cheap as you want, but if there is downtime, it kills any margin you gain through electric. Not a great place for beta testing.

Maybe Uber/Lyft, will work, but if you want to tip the scales on fossil fuel consumption, it needs to be in trucks and trucks can't break down. They just ****ing can't.

It's the main one at least, at least as far as I understand it.

If you're going to build an electric car "right", it cannot be a normal car merely converted to run on electricity. Your main powertrain components need to be in/on the skate as compact as possible, like an iphone. Sure, it's less parts, but if done right, it's loads of complexity. For example, after you've produced the 7,104 battery cells for 100kWh pack, you need to make 14,208 welds just to connect the batteries, and the pack STILL isn't finished.

Of course you could do like all the other OEMs who are feverishly trying to play catchup, and use lightweight prismatic cells. Problem with that is, while they make production/range/cooling/etc easier, they result in a shit product.(that expensive battery pack that'll need replaced after 10 years you always heard about). This will result in lemons that will kill consumer confidence in existing OEMs.

Electrification will happen quickly. Every OEM has committed to electrifying save Toyota. Fiat was holding out like a bratty child refusing to eat broccoli, but have now started they have their eyes set on Tesla. They had better too, b/c Tesla is eating everyone's lunch in the auto categories they compete in.

On top of that, multiple countries have set drop dead dates for internal combustion engine sales. China is full throttle in on electric and India's not far behind. If you're out of those markets, you may as well consider yourself a boutique auto manufacturer.

As for adaptation, that's for the existing OEMs to worry about. Tesla is fine, China has 487 electric car manufactures and the field is racing to the finish to play catchup.

Not sure the point about "trucks can't break down". Electric should pretty much always be more reliable than combustion. Cars and trucks today have become Rube Goldberg machines. Very few run at engineered efficiency. All that complexity creates too many points of failure.

I think you're ignoring the fact that traditional OEMs spend over $50 billion per year in advertising and Tesla spends $0. Their growth has been organic to this point. I'm still shocked at how many people I come across who've never heard of them, or have, but don't know s thing about them. Tesla has a supply problem, not a demand problem. 7,000 orders last week. That's 100% of current known production capacity.

Also, Teslas products have great margins. MUCH better than industry average. They just invest >100% back into the company. The Silicon Valley model may not be for other OEMs, then again, they have fully deployed manufacturing capacity and haven't really done much innovating since electronic fuel injection.

I'll never understand the "Tesla will die" argument.

First, the tax incentives are icing, obviously not necessary given their customer bases willingness to shell out huge sums of cash for the cars. Other OEMs might have that problem as they don't offer much else beyond transportation, but Teslas will become a value proposition. 20 years ago nobody thought they'd ever spend $600-800 on a phone, or $2,000 on a TV, but here we are.

Mostly though, it's that the private investors who have already committed billions aren't going to let Tesla sink with nearly $25 billion in reservations sitting on the table. Not to mention that Tesla hasn't even begun to leverage all of its assets at this point.

Tesla also has a lower debt to equity ratio than the industry average. Ford on the other hand is nearly double average.

I don't think adoption will happen even close to overnight. My point is that even big auto and big oil, who've blocked the tech for years, have resigned themselves to the fact that this is inevitable.

Fastest adoption will be public sector. They want EVs and driverless on the roads yesterday. EVs will save a shitload on public transit gas costs and driverless may take a while for actual public transit, but will be huge for "last mile" type transit. Commercially, I agree... transport will take a while especially considering unions, but there are a ton of commercial operations where a driverless off-road vehicle would have huge value with minimal risk. But Uber/Lyft are really what tipped the scales. Big Auto is working with them, not against them. They're extremely motivated to get EVs and eventually driverless on the roads for practical business reasons.

The reason Uber/Lyft and public transit is important isn't mass adoption. It's that it motivates scalability. EVs' biggest obstacle by a mile today is scale. Scale means more charging stations, an innovation arms race, and investors taking bigger and bolder risks. More importantly, scale will ultimately create more charging stations and cheaper prices, which will be huge for adoption.

The only thing I could see sinking Tesla is Elon Musk. Not for the tech, but because his business savvy can be a bit of a wild card. But the idea that tax incentives juiced the market is just crazy. Musk had to do it with not just daggers, but knives being thrown directly into his back and he did it entirely on his own. That's not the case now. Now the patents are all open sourced, his key partners are now working with him vs. against him, and you have lots of investors really interested in scaling this. Not because of "social responsibility" but because they see value in making the technology work.

That new Roadster is going to be THE car kids dream about when it comes out. The present day version of the muscle cars of the kids of the 60's, the Countach & Testarossa of kids my age, McClaren's etc.

Only that car today will be electric. That's going to create a huge mental shift in future generations.

Change like this is always slowly, then suddenly. One day everyone is making fun of the new thing, and the next day it seems they're gone.

Look at how Blackberry treated the iPhone...

Also, there are only 2 car brands I've ever had the experience of every single person that owns one loves them. You never hear people say they were happy when they sold them.

Porsche. And Tesla.

People underestimate that, or try to dismiss it as being sheep. At least with Tesla, nobody really thinks of sheep when you think of a Porsche owner.

If you don't view Tesla (or at least e-cars generally) as the cars of the future, you haven't ridden in one. To quote a guy from the WSJ yesterday:

“If you were hoping Tesla would fail on account of the Model 3 I’ve got bad news: This thing is magnificent”
"The Model 3 is more than futuristic. It's optimistic. This is what ordinary cars should be, which is to say, better than they are.
"This thing is magnificent, a little rainbow-farting space ship..."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-e...vel-1532022533

My buddy got a P85D S a few months ago and if I'd never seen or heard of a Tesla and rode in it he could have told me it came from a time machine and I'd have believed him.

The gap between what that thing is, and what I think of when I think of a car, is huge.

Also, FWIW the electric car I'm most excited about coming soon is that VW ID Buzz. That thing is cool as hell.

But, if price is similar to Tesla, with the way their supercharger network is built out, and their car will take me from station to station so as to let me drive across the country, it'd be a tough sell.

Unless VW builds a similar network here I guess. I'd be fairly doubtful on that happening though...

I am 100% rooting for Tesla to become the dominant auto manufacturer and seller in the world. Being blind to their challenges won't help them get their any faster. MOney talks and bullshit walks. If they can't produce a product in sufficient quantity and quality at a price point that allows them to consistently sell enough units to become profitable they will go to the huge graveyard of great theories that couldn't become practical.

Any company can die.

I'm not motivated to research and post but Tesla is burning through cash. It remains to be seen how patient those investors are.

Tesla's competition isn't likely to be Ford. It is more likely to be the German makers who are going to start cranking out upscale electric sedans that compete head on with Tesla's products. They started out behind, but they can spend tens of billions on development without having to take out loans and they have gotten very good at cranking out reliable vehicles on relatively low margins.

I hope Tesla survives and stays independent, but I got real doubts about that. I could see it getting to the point of having to be either entirely sold or partially sold through a strategic investment by another car company in order to stay afloat.

And I could see Musk refusing to see the writing on the wall and driving it into the ground before letting it be sold while it still could be.

Kinda sorta off topic, but this article is one of the best analyses of perceptions of Elon Musk I've read so far (aside from the Quora article it links toward the bottom):

https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/20/...-diver-rescue/

Competition for Tesla is a good thing, not a bad thing. Elon Musk has chosen to open source battery patents even if that means someone builds a better mousetrap. Restricted competition, on the other hand, is a big reason Tesla hasn't scaled as much as they'd like. Battery patents were hidden. Big Auto purposefully tanked innovation on EV and that's a huge barrier. If European manufacturers invest in EV, then more and more users will adopt EV, which means more charging stations will pop up. And investors will be more willing to take risk on transformational technology - the biggest one being... a better battery probably exists, but it'll take big risk takers to find it.

It's like VHS vs. Beta. Beta failed because they couldn't scale enough to make it the media standard. Tesla knows their growth is dependent on competitors jumping in. I imagine European competitors will innovate a better core technology, while Tesla continues to innovate on features. More entrants means rapid improvements to core technology, cheaper material prices, and biggest of all... more charging stations.

Gonna leave this here

https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/101...349741056?s=19

What’s the significance?

Just that you can drive it like a street racer I guess.

Oh. Thanks.

I get it. Believe me. I do. But that's not limited to electric. Everytime Chevy does an engine redesign or a new platform or whatever they go through the same shit. Deere does the same shit. Simple truth is there are far fewer moving parts in electric and it should be a far simpler design than Internal Combustion.

At no point did I say they should just put an electric motor in a gasoline car.

I really don't care how they get there. I'm just saying it won't be easy.



Sounds good in theory, but getting tires on the pavement is a different deal alltogether.

Same shit happened in Ag. GPS got de-militarized or whatever - signal became available commercially. Then we as an industry got all this blue sky bullshit about revolutionizing farming and data and management and VRA of every input, and blah blah blah.

Well, Autosteer took hold like wildfire. The money is easy there. OEMs took hold made it easy and the money was flat and the value was real. That changed the look of Ag significantly. Cool. Things are progressing just like they said.

That's when shit hit the skids. VRA is easily available on most everything, but determining the factors that drive variation in yield, to determine what function should be VRA and the algorithm in which the rate should be varied is still up in the air, largely. I don't know the percentage of ag operations that utilize VRA, but anecdotally, I'd say maybe 5% of operations utilize VRA in a manner that I would say the science is sound.

So on most operations, the management hasn't really changed outside of the 5% that utilize the technology on sound science.

This giant life changing technology really only gave us straight rows and changed work that is done in the cab.

Dude. You just got done telling me how complicated these vehicles are going to be. Complexity introduces risk for failure. I agree that electric should be more reliable. Anecdotally, I've seen the same result with irrigation power units. We have both natural gas power units and electric power units. Electric is far more reliable than natural gas internal combustion.

However, the point still stands, you can't have it both ways. If it's complicated, it's more likely to be unreliable.

But my point was that QA has to be on point, because commercial guys can't break down. They just can't take it.

That's all fair excepting the driverless business. I posted it before, but it's just not going to happen without change in the legal system.

I'm no lawyer. Let's get that out of the way, but I've been hearing about this nonsense in Ag for a long time too. AUTOMATED TRACTORS BE COMING MOTHER****ER. Right. The oldest tractor I have is a 2004 tractor with all the technology necessary to operate without my ass in the seat. And tractors have changed A LOT in 15 years.

So the issue in automated tractors lies, not in the technology, or the market, or whatever else you could think of. It's the law.

I get in a tractor with GPS and the first thing that that pops up on the screen is a message that says that the operator is responsible for collision avoidance. This is the key cog legally. If shit gets sideways, and something ****s up, it's on the driver. So take the driver out of the equation. Shit goes sideways, something ****s up, who's liable? It isn't the operator. Any decent lawyer points that squarely on the OEM. And Mother Deere doesn't play that way.

Well same thing goes for driverless cars. Someone's kid gets run over and there is going to be a lawsuit. Sure, there can be collision avoidance measures like airplanes have and some of the cars now are trying to get on the road, but that doesn't account for everything. There will be accidents because they can't be completely avoided. Without some guidance from the legal system that will pull overarching liability off the OEM's, it doesn't appear to be in the cards.

I don't intend to be the anti-electric guy, but there is far too much blue sky being sold here.

I REALLY want electric cars. If copper weren't so expensive, I'd have every well I have on electric too.

I'd have to see how it worked in Ag, because diesel (and unfortunately now, DEF) is still portable. Electricity is going to be harder to get across the countryside to fields.

Nobody wants this to happen more than I do, but it is intergalacticly stupid to think that it will just happen because the technology is there. Many many good ideas with good intentions have been derailed by bullshit. Tesla isn't exempt because it is a good story.

As an example of how silly media scrutiny of Tesla has been, here's an article from 2010 about the 300k EVs per year Volkswagen was planning to sell in 2018. They may have come up a LITTLE short of that.

https://www.treehugger.com/cars/volk...r-by-2018.html

(Spoiler alert: they're barely selling any at all.)

By 2025, VW says it plans to sell as many as 3 million all-electric cars per year, Diess told investors Thursday at the annual shareholder meeting in Berlin. The biggest concentration of those vehicles will be in China

I expect to see dozens of news reports about it if they don't hit that mark. That's how this works, right?

More EVs and more charging stations is certainly a good thing for Tesla. Assuming the industry settles on an open standard for charging as opposed to each car maker having their own standard and their own chargers. Will probably happen but you never know for sure. VHS and Beta battled it out for quite a while.

And I'm not so with you on that analogy. A Beta player is worthless if nobody releases movies on it. Outside of charging stations, Tesla isn't as dependent on third parties to make Teslas a success.

But I have read that in large parts of the US, potential customers are steered away from EV vehicles. Even when it is their own company's vehicles (Toyota/Leaf for example). Having more EVs could change that.

Sure, it is easy for a company to make wild claims about what the company is going to be doing 8 years in the future. Musk has come up a wee bit short of some of his grandiose claims too.

VW paid lip service back in 2010 but they were too busy making fistfuls of cash selling diesels and didn't put real money into EVs. Their diesel market has since imploded. China and some major European countries are pushing electric vehicles as a way to combat urban smog and other urban air pollution issues. This time around, VW is backing up their talk with billions in investment.

I don't see any reason to doubt that VW will be a major producer of electric cars in 8~10 years time.

The Tesla doubters may be proved wrong, but I think they have a pretty strong case.

This will be a big advantage once battery supply becomes constrained. Being able to control cell production is huge.

He's still doing more for U.S. energy change than most. He's pushing the technology forward more than our entire worthless ass government.

You believe it’s government’s role to innovate and act as entrepreneur?

The hype around Tesla annoyed me. I appreciated Musk as a visionary but never really took Tesla seriously.

My wife had an important birthday. She wanted an SUV. Had some ideas that I easily picked apart. She then mentioned Tesla in the same way that she had Bitcoin as a Christmas gift at the highs months before. I sighed heavily and went along for a test drive.

Loved the Model X experience. Loved the technology. Loved how it felt different.

We took delivery two weeks ago. Could not be more pleased or impressed. (The wife likes it!/end thread.) Not sure about the sustainability of it as a business model and not quite ready to provide Tesla with a multi-year 0% loan in the form of a Roadster deposit, but I’m beyond intrigued.

I think Tesla is pretty cool and that’s probably pretty representative.

The ID products are pretty cool. I could see them selling a lot of those.

I can't imagine they'd use different standards. Tesla open sourced their battery patent. They want competition. They'd be nuts not to. They know their biggest hurdle right now is adoption.

For sure potential customers are being steered away from EVs. Big oil has lobbied for years against it. Big auto set up skunk work operations for years because they know EVs are cheaper to service. There will be more EVs on the road, because of Uber/Lyft, public transportation (eBuses, etc.), and eventually driverless. As more EVs hit the road, you'll see batteries innovate rapidly.

I guess I'm the opposite.

I don't see what Musk has done that is so visionary. He is a charismatic salesman and I'm sure he is smart and a hard worker. Reminds me of Steve Jobs for getting credit for a bunch of products and ideas that a bunch of other people had already tried.

Putting satellites into orbit dates to the 60's. London had electric buses in 1907 (that is not a typo). Colonies on Mars and hyper loops is a bunch of BS he does to get media attention (and aren't original ideas anyway). People have been digging tunnels underground for hundreds of years. I don't know much about his time at PayPal but an online payment service seems rather obvious. Kudos to him for starting the right business at the right time.

On the other hand, starting a car company is hard. The US hasn't had a new, successful car company in something like 80 years.

He made electric cars sexy the same way that Jobs made music players and smart phones sexy. He appears to have the same type of fanatical following that Apple has. Credit for a well-engineered product and a fabulous job of branding.

I hope Tesla succeeds. I think the odds of it succeeding as an independent company are probably less than 50-50.

The $7,500 tax credit that buyers of Tesla cars get surely helped a bit.

I don't know that visionary needs to mean that the core of the idea is their own. He is pushing these ideas, where in some of the categories, nobody else was. These are all things that would likely happen at some point anyway, but pushing the world to see the events happen now or as soon as possible counts for something in my book.

The United States wasn't visionary and groundbreaking because they invented democracy. It was forcing it upon the world and making it work that cemented it's(our) legacy.

When private markets fail to even try? Yeah.

Elon must be getting tired of answering to public investors.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.</p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Not that anyone would turn it down, but how big of a difference would this credit really make when you can't lease the thing, and the purchase price is north of $80k?

Big part of the reason why I think this credit is stupid.

Yeah, the credit probably had a more meaningful impact on sales of other EVs like the Nissan Leaf (the one I bought) and Chevy Bolt. With a price tag around $35k, that $7,500 is pretty significant. At a price point of $50k+, it makes less of a difference.

For sure.

Atlanta for awhile was the #1 market in the country for the Leaf cause you got a $7500 credit from the US gov't, and $5000 from the state. There was a 2 year window where people were basically leasing them for free, or in some cases getting paid to get one.

Dumb, but certainly had a huge effect on sales here.

Yep. Colorado has a $5k credit as well, and (after I'd already bought mine) our electric company is pitching in $3k on top of that. So you can walk out with a $35k car for $19,500. It's a pretty screaming deal when it comes down to it.

You'd be surprised how much influence that savings has on folks with bank. Rich people don't stay rich by throwing money away.

If the new Leaf coming with the 200 mile battery is available close to that price they'll sell as many as they can make there.

Georgia got rid of the credit so not as big of a deal here anymore. BUT you can get a used Leaf all day long for about $7500 here.

Shit that is so tempting it’s crazy. If you pay cash do you get the rebates up front or do you have to wait for 6 months to get them?